I don't understand this attitude of "going back to the stone age."
Sure, war or some other catastrophic event could destroy modern industrialized society as we know it. But it's way too hard to actually destroy ALL of the collected knowledge of humanity.
The farthest we can fall is a drastically reduced population scraping out survival via subsistence farming (hand labor, but we get to keep our metal tools and knowledge of biology and farming techniques). Guns will survive (ammo might be rare), bows won't be forgotten, and neither will swords and other metal weaponry. Even if new ones can't be made at first, there's still going to be plenty of them lying around (and the same can be said for all the other areas of tech as well). Every piece of technology that is immediately relevant to daily survival will be remembered. Sure, there won't be computers or cars or any of that stuff, but we're not going to forget stuff like basic metalworking and crop rotation.
This will quickly (within no more than a generation or two) organize into little feudal kingdoms. Economy of scale will then allow for the necessary "leisure time" for a few enterprising individuals to dig up the vast majority of the rest of the "non-essential" knowledge and surviving equipment of the previous civilization, learn how it all works, and start up production.
I predict it wouldn't be more than 100 years from the cataclysm that you'd see a fast-motion repeat of the industrial revolution (we'd burn a lot of wood and even grow a little bit of gasoline from grass & sugar), followed by a rapid ramp-up toward nuclear and solar power, and we'd be pretty much right back where we are now (in terms of tech level) in no time.
Now, please don't confuse me for an optimist. I actually think that the human race surviving and continuing on its present course is probably bad news for the rest of the galaxy. I just don't see how we can actually be stopped at this point by anything short of total extinction.
You seem to be confused about how eBay's proxy bidding system works. That's OK, you're not alone. Based on the prevalence of "sniping" programs and people complaining about losing auctions due to "sniping", it seems nobody understands proxy bidding.
Here's how it works: You bid what you are willing to pay. No more, no less. eBay then bids ONLY AS MUCH AS NECESSARY to make you the winning bidder. Competitors DO NOT get to see your maximum bid. The seller DOES NOT get to see your maximum bid. The only person who knows is you, and maybe some admin at eBay.
Example: You are bidding on an auction. You decide that you are willing to pay exactly $21 for the item (you want to beat people willing to pay the nice round figure of $20, but $22 is just plain outside of your budget). Let's say the current high bid stands at $17. If you bid $21, you will be the winning bidder at $18. Even if you bid $10,000,000 your visible bid will only be $18 (until someone else bids higher than $18, that is).
I have participated in many auctions on eBay, and the only ones I have ever "lost" were due to the simple fact that someone else was willing to pay more than I was for the item in question. Sometimes they do it in the last 4 seconds of the auction (which is admittedly annoying), but they still have to be willing to pay more than I am.
It seems that a lot of people care more about winning the auction (like it's some kind of contest) than they do about getting the merchandise for an acceptable price. To me, THEY are the suckers.
Additionally, let's string up all those morons who use the word "nice" to mean "pleasant". Nice doesn't mean "pleasant" it means "simple and foolish". As in, George W. Bush is a "nice" person.
And if I hear one more person say "gay" meaning "homosexual" I might just bust a vein in my forehead. I mean, seriously, it just means happy.
(/sarcasm)
Ok, seriously, I understand your annoyance with what you perceive as the "breakdown" of our language (I even used to be on your bandwagon myself).
But years ago, I realized something very important, and changed my position on this subject. (I know, I'm a flip-flopper).
The great realization I came to is: Language evolves from common usage. I know you said in your post "fuck common usage", but that's all any language is; a collection of commonly used sounds that are used to represent commonly understood concepts. The definitions you want to cling to were established by common usage, why is it now not OK for common usage to continue to define and redefine our words?
You may not like it, but if the vast majority of English-speaking humans agree that "ironic" now means "coincidental" then IT DOES, and you are actually the one who is wrong (regardless of what is printed in any particular dictionary at any given time).
By refusing to go along with the rest of the English-speaking world when linguistic evolution occurs, you are just alienating yourself and promoting even more confusion.
If you insist on clinging to old definitions, then please determine what year your internal dictionary is stuck in and wear a sign indicating this information so the rest of us can have a chance at figuring out how to communicate with you.
Meanwhile, I'm just going to keep up with how everyone else is talking.
Like it or not, popular (mis)use has expanded the definition of "irony". Is that really SO bad?Sorry, "expanding the definition of a word" is not the same as "not knowing what the hell one is talking about". Perhaps if we'd all just quack like ducks there would be world peace.
So does that mean that in your world people who say "nice" to mean "kind and pleasant" don't know what the hell they are talking about? (It used to mean "foolish and simple-minded") Are people who use the term "gay" to mean "homosexual" similarly confused? (used to mean "happy and carefree")
At what point does a popular alternate definition become "acceptable"? Is it when the editors of Webster's Dictionary finally get around to printing it, or is it when a majority of native speakers use and understand it?
The fact that our language is evolving and expanding is what makes it DIFFERENT from duckspeak. If you let it stagnate, we might as well just quack.
I believe that the initial poster who "mis-used" irony did, in fact, know what he was talking about. Additionally, I knew what he was talking about, and I'm willing to bet that 99% of fluent English speakers would know what he was talking about. Apparently you didn't, because you either missed or simply refuse to acknowledge the alternate definition update. Please try to keep up.
Sir, it is not ironic at all, unless Alanis Morissette is your English tutor.
You know, I honestly used to agree with you on the "preserve the old dictionary meanings of words" bandwagon and got annoyed when people "mis-used" words like irony.
However, a couple of years ago I took the stick out of my ass and realized that language is constantly evolving. Like it or not, popular (mis)use has expanded the definition of "irony". Is that really SO bad?
Need I bring up the example that "nice" used to mean "foolish", but common use changed its meaning? Did I miss the memo about the English language having achieved perfection and no further linguistic evolution was to be permitted?
If I had a point, it was that for there to be progress, the conservative viewpoint has to occasionally be ignored.
The physicists are more certain that nothing cataclysmic will happen than you are certain that there is not a bear waiting to eat you on the other side of the hill. The risks exists, but only in the sense that it cannot be ruled out, not in the sense that it might actually happen.
I appreciate what you are saying about ignoring conservatism for the sake of progress. I fully support individual daredevils who push the limits of safety to further human knowledge.
But the difference here is that going to the other side of the hill and getting eaten by a bear is only a risk to the person doing the exploring. Like I said before, I don't mind taking the PERSONAL risk of getting eaten by a bear or swallowed up by a mini-black hole from a supercollider. What I'm concerned about is the SOCIETAL risk of EVERYONE getting swallowed up by a mini-black hole or some other strangeness we don't even have a name for yet. If there's an indication, however slim, that we might create a doomsday event by playing with these forces, I'd just like to do it in a controlled fashion. You know, like putting said supercollider in a location that, if something unexpected happens, the destruction would be localized to the unlucky research team and not something that would end our entire civilization.
Let me repeat myself again: I AM NOT OPPOSED TO SUPERCOLLIDER RESEARCH ON THE GROUNDS THAT SOMEONE MIGHT DIE. I AM OPPOSED TO SUPERCOLLIDER RESEARCH ON OUR ONLY PLANET ON THE GROUNDS THAT EVERYONE MIGHT DIE. (Apologies for yelling, but I really can't stress this distinction enough, apparently).
Not being believed is hardly a qualification for being right.
An unpopular prediction of cataclysmic disaster is hardly a qualification for being wrong, either.
And, FWIW, I'm not even predicting disaster. I'm just saying that there is sufficient risk to justify taking more precautions than we are.
But, I'm fighting an uphill battle here. Nobody wants to put in a stoplight for the crosswalk until AFTER some poor kid gets killed. It's just human nature...
Also, don't climb that hill over there, you might find out what is on the other side, and it might be dangerous. It's certainly possible that the entire physics community is wrong or engaged in a giant conspiracy to destroy us all, but it isn't all that likely, and the fun part is that it is just as much their planet as it is your planet.
I sure hope you're not a troll, because I'm going to give you a real response.
I'm not opposed to the research, and I definitely don't think the physics community is engaged in a conspiracy to destroy us. However, I do know that NO ONE KNOWS what's going to happen when we start smashing bigger and bigger stuff together at higher and higher speeds. We simply don't know how likely a doomsday event is. We can make some good guesses, but at the end of the day they're still guesses. The fact that every other news story I hear about supercolliders basically reads "something totally unexpected happened, physicists are revising their models" doesn't give me a lot of confidence when they say "the odds of something going horribly wrong are negligible, just look at our models!"
I don't mind taking the risk of going over that hill to see what's on the other side, because whatever happens to be over there is, at worst, only going to kill ME, not the entire planet. By that same logic, I would even be personally willing to work as a technician at the deep-space supercollider to further human knowledge of physics. I don't care if I die, I just don't want to see everything we've worked to create over the last 10,000 years destroyed in the blink of an eye by a single research project, just as we are on the cusp of finally sending some spores off this rock.
As another poster pointed out, there's a reason you don't introduce novel upgrades on a live production system. Just because everything SHOULD work out ok doesn't mean it WILL, and I would prefer that we performed these tests in a properly isolated sandbox environment, just in case. I wouldn't care about preserving this planet so much if we already had another one.
As far as the thought of "it's just as much their planet as it is mine," have you ever heard the quote "Your right to swing your fist ends at my face"?
Can we have the "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense" tag? I've been concerned about the effects of building larger and larger supercolliders on my planet for years now. The whole point of building these things and playing with them is that WE DON'T KNOW exactly what's going to happen when we fire them up, and we learn a lot when we do. I'm all for research, but could we at least stick these things out in space where they are less likely to destroy the entire planet when something unexpected happens? (How about one of the earth-sun LaGrange points? Or maybe Mars is more practical?) Am I the only person that thinks that replicating conditions from the first couple nanoseconds of the universe on the surface of our only planet without actually knowing what's going to happen first is a bad thing? Frankly I think we've been lucky so far, and we need to stop playing Russian Roulette without even knowing the rules.
Actually there was a 13th sign called "Ophiuchus" before they revised the system to get rid of "unlucky" numbers and to shoehorn the remaining signs into periods of equal length. (The reason that Scorpio is traditionally regarded as such a "powerful" sign is that it used to only last for about a week, making Scorpios rather rare.)
I'm probably coming to the discussion too late for anyone to actually read this, but:
Has anyone stopped to consider that just maybe there might be a shred of truth to astrology? If nothing else, people who believe in it may subconsciously shape their actions and interactions with others to make astrological predictions self-fulfilling.
I am a rational, scientifically-minded person that demands proof before belief. I have personally witnessed enough anecdotal evidence in support of there being *something* behind astrology that I feel it warrants further investigation. It could just be an exercise in self-fulfilling group psychology, or there could be a deeper connection. Also, the patterns in the sky and the patterns in human behavior may simply both be expressions of a deeper pattern. (Correlation does not necessarily equal causation).
I am saddened that any real discussion on the topic is halted by knee-jerk reactions. Far too many of us regard "Science" as a religion, devoutly upholding beliefs in that which has been published before, and discounting the possibility of alternate explanations, in a blatant violation of what science is supposed to be about.
If the math says that the universe is really wadded up on itself through higher-dimensional folding, is the thought of everything being connected in a way we can't see through our limited three-dimensional perception filter really that bizarre?
On a more amusing note here in Montreal they use classical music for the same purpose. Stores that don't want kids around will play it outside their shops. Pissed me off the first time heard something good and went inside to get a better listen only to discover that inside they were playing some crap radio station.
They tried that classical music idea a few years ago in my town square to try to get rid of the herds of punks and gothlings that were always hanging around... Amusingly, most of them didn't budge because they actually *liked* the classical music. (FWIW, most ripped clothes/purple mohawk/20lb. wallet chain types that I've ever met are actually audiophiles with good well-rounded taste in music). I'd like to think that some old fogies learned a lesson about preconceived notions, but honestly I doubt it.
By the way, I am nearly 30 myself and am capable of hearing outside of the "normal" range as well. If I ever encounter a business with one of these devices, I'm definitely going to have a little chat with the store manager about how they will never see any of my money ever again, and go out of my way to tell everyone I know to avoid that business as well.
I find it interesting that I'm responding to an article modded +5 insightful and I feel like I'm feeding the trolls. Oh well, here goes nothing.
This being Islam we're talking about, it propably won't take too long before death threats start flying, and it's always possible some lunatic will decide to carry them out, or take less drastic action, such as a cyber-attack against the Wikipedia servers. Making sure that the database is safe from any such attacks is only common sense; and the easiest way to accomplish that is to back it up and spread the copies to as many places as possible.
Cue a hundred replies claiming that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance; and maybe it is - I wouldn't know, since I haven't read their holy book. All I know is that it certainly seems attract lots of bloodthirsty lunatics who use their religion as an excuse to live up to their murderous nature.
Wow. Um, have you actually met any Muslims? Apparently not. I can tell you've been watching a lot of American news and political speeches, though.
Every religion attracts bloodthirsty lunatics who use their religion as an excuse to live up to their murderous nature. Christianity is historically and currently the worst offender by far as far as that one goes.
That said, 99.9% of both Muslims and Christians are actually polite, peaceful, mostly tolerant people. Don't let a few extremists ruin your opinion of an entire culture!
If you must direct your anger somewhere, direct it at the concept of organized religion in general, not individual religions. (Now I'm sure to be modded flamebait!)
regular drinking alcohol (i.e. 40-45% by volume) will not ignite if you put a match to it. Huh? Have you actually tried it? I've seen 30-40% alcohol drinks burn at room temperature without any problems. I call bullshit. I have personally tried to ignite whiskey and vodka (both 80 proof = 40% by volume). They will burn with a pathetic blue flame that will go out if you walk past it. If you've seen a flaming alcohol drink, it involved something a bit stronger than normal booze (something like bacardi 151 (75.5% by volume) burns great).
Sports and religion may not be geeky topics (although I could actually make a case for both, but that's not my point), but copyright law is most definitely a geeky subject these days.
Dude, don't you know anything? The King James Bible is a divinely-inspired *perfect* translation of the Exact Word Of God(TM). At least that's what they told me in Catholic School. They wouldn't lie about something like that, would they?
I doubt violent imagery has no effect on you, it likely agitates the flight or fight response but I am skeptical on whether it can induce violence in a normal/average person.
I am skeptical as well about the ability of violent imagery to induce violence.
I think witnessing any form of violence/dangerous situation definitely activates an instinctual response to prepare for said situation. I bet if you took a group of research subjects, showed them movies of people fighting for 20 minutes, and had them brawl with the "control" group who had just been watching movies of fluffy kittens for 20 minutes, the violence-watchers would win. (Of course, we can't do *that* study... grumble grumble...) I bet you could even demonstrate that people who are already agitated are more likely to go "over the edge" after watching appropriately violent stimulus (and less likely after KittenVision[tm]).
However, I still firmly believe in personal responsibility. Nothing can induce violence but your own damn brain, making the decision to be violent. Please, everyone, hold people accountable for their own actions, and don't censor *my* entertainment just because it might inspire some other asshole to be more of an asshole than he already is.
This proves conclusively that modern humans are responsible for global warming. As soon as we developed, the Earth started warming up. We did not even need SUVs to cause global climate change.
I've long thought that the origin of global warming was the beginning of organized agriculture, not the industrial revolution... That's when we started deforesting, changing the terrain, and increasing the mammal population (us and our food stock) to ridiculous unheard-of levels (and mammals put out a lot of heat and methane and stuff). Not to mention burning all that wood...
I'm sorry, but as a fan of the movie Faceoff (what can I say, sometimes I like high-spectacle mindless action movies), I must report that they, in fact, did not ignore the issue of bone structure. When they mounted the badguy's face on the hero's skull, they did it on top of a plastic mold that they said was shaped like the badguy's bone structure.
(Not saying that this would work in the real world, just correcting the statement that the movie did not address this issue).
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I don't understand this attitude of "going back to the stone age."
Sure, war or some other catastrophic event could destroy modern industrialized society as we know it. But it's way too hard to actually destroy ALL of the collected knowledge of humanity.
The farthest we can fall is a drastically reduced population scraping out survival via subsistence farming (hand labor, but we get to keep our metal tools and knowledge of biology and farming techniques). Guns will survive (ammo might be rare), bows won't be forgotten, and neither will swords and other metal weaponry. Even if new ones can't be made at first, there's still going to be plenty of them lying around (and the same can be said for all the other areas of tech as well). Every piece of technology that is immediately relevant to daily survival will be remembered. Sure, there won't be computers or cars or any of that stuff, but we're not going to forget stuff like basic metalworking and crop rotation.
This will quickly (within no more than a generation or two) organize into little feudal kingdoms. Economy of scale will then allow for the necessary "leisure time" for a few enterprising individuals to dig up the vast majority of the rest of the "non-essential" knowledge and surviving equipment of the previous civilization, learn how it all works, and start up production.
I predict it wouldn't be more than 100 years from the cataclysm that you'd see a fast-motion repeat of the industrial revolution (we'd burn a lot of wood and even grow a little bit of gasoline from grass & sugar), followed by a rapid ramp-up toward nuclear and solar power, and we'd be pretty much right back where we are now (in terms of tech level) in no time.
Now, please don't confuse me for an optimist. I actually think that the human race surviving and continuing on its present course is probably bad news for the rest of the galaxy. I just don't see how we can actually be stopped at this point by anything short of total extinction.
You seem to be confused about how eBay's proxy bidding system works. That's OK, you're not alone. Based on the prevalence of "sniping" programs and people complaining about losing auctions due to "sniping", it seems nobody understands proxy bidding.
Here's how it works: You bid what you are willing to pay. No more, no less. eBay then bids ONLY AS MUCH AS NECESSARY to make you the winning bidder. Competitors DO NOT get to see your maximum bid. The seller DOES NOT get to see your maximum bid. The only person who knows is you, and maybe some admin at eBay.
Example: You are bidding on an auction. You decide that you are willing to pay exactly $21 for the item (you want to beat people willing to pay the nice round figure of $20, but $22 is just plain outside of your budget). Let's say the current high bid stands at $17. If you bid $21, you will be the winning bidder at $18. Even if you bid $10,000,000 your visible bid will only be $18 (until someone else bids higher than $18, that is).
I have participated in many auctions on eBay, and the only ones I have ever "lost" were due to the simple fact that someone else was willing to pay more than I was for the item in question. Sometimes they do it in the last 4 seconds of the auction (which is admittedly annoying), but they still have to be willing to pay more than I am.
It seems that a lot of people care more about winning the auction (like it's some kind of contest) than they do about getting the merchandise for an acceptable price. To me, THEY are the suckers.
Additionally, let's string up all those morons who use the word "nice" to mean "pleasant". Nice doesn't mean "pleasant" it means "simple and foolish". As in, George W. Bush is a "nice" person.
And if I hear one more person say "gay" meaning "homosexual" I might just bust a vein in my forehead. I mean, seriously, it just means happy.
(/sarcasm)
Ok, seriously, I understand your annoyance with what you perceive as the "breakdown" of our language (I even used to be on your bandwagon myself).
But years ago, I realized something very important, and changed my position on this subject. (I know, I'm a flip-flopper).
The great realization I came to is: Language evolves from common usage. I know you said in your post "fuck common usage", but that's all any language is; a collection of commonly used sounds that are used to represent commonly understood concepts. The definitions you want to cling to were established by common usage, why is it now not OK for common usage to continue to define and redefine our words?
You may not like it, but if the vast majority of English-speaking humans agree that "ironic" now means "coincidental" then IT DOES, and you are actually the one who is wrong (regardless of what is printed in any particular dictionary at any given time).
By refusing to go along with the rest of the English-speaking world when linguistic evolution occurs, you are just alienating yourself and promoting even more confusion.
If you insist on clinging to old definitions, then please determine what year your internal dictionary is stuck in and wear a sign indicating this information so the rest of us can have a chance at figuring out how to communicate with you.
Meanwhile, I'm just going to keep up with how everyone else is talking.
Like it or not, popular (mis)use has expanded the definition of "irony". Is that really SO bad? Sorry, "expanding the definition of a word" is not the same as "not knowing what the hell one is talking about". Perhaps if we'd all just quack like ducks there would be world peace.
So does that mean that in your world people who say "nice" to mean "kind and pleasant" don't know what the hell they are talking about? (It used to mean "foolish and simple-minded") Are people who use the term "gay" to mean "homosexual" similarly confused? (used to mean "happy and carefree")
At what point does a popular alternate definition become "acceptable"? Is it when the editors of Webster's Dictionary finally get around to printing it, or is it when a majority of native speakers use and understand it?
The fact that our language is evolving and expanding is what makes it DIFFERENT from duckspeak. If you let it stagnate, we might as well just quack.
I believe that the initial poster who "mis-used" irony did, in fact, know what he was talking about. Additionally, I knew what he was talking about, and I'm willing to bet that 99% of fluent English speakers would know what he was talking about. Apparently you didn't, because you either missed or simply refuse to acknowledge the alternate definition update. Please try to keep up.
Sir, it is not ironic at all, unless Alanis Morissette is your English tutor.
You know, I honestly used to agree with you on the "preserve the old dictionary meanings of words" bandwagon and got annoyed when people "mis-used" words like irony.
However, a couple of years ago I took the stick out of my ass and realized that language is constantly evolving. Like it or not, popular (mis)use has expanded the definition of "irony". Is that really SO bad?
Need I bring up the example that "nice" used to mean "foolish", but common use changed its meaning? Did I miss the memo about the English language having achieved perfection and no further linguistic evolution was to be permitted?
If I had a point, it was that for there to be progress, the conservative viewpoint has to occasionally be ignored.
The physicists are more certain that nothing cataclysmic will happen than you are certain that there is not a bear waiting to eat you on the other side of the hill. The risks exists, but only in the sense that it cannot be ruled out, not in the sense that it might actually happen.
I appreciate what you are saying about ignoring conservatism for the sake of progress. I fully support individual daredevils who push the limits of safety to further human knowledge.
But the difference here is that going to the other side of the hill and getting eaten by a bear is only a risk to the person doing the exploring. Like I said before, I don't mind taking the PERSONAL risk of getting eaten by a bear or swallowed up by a mini-black hole from a supercollider. What I'm concerned about is the SOCIETAL risk of EVERYONE getting swallowed up by a mini-black hole or some other strangeness we don't even have a name for yet. If there's an indication, however slim, that we might create a doomsday event by playing with these forces, I'd just like to do it in a controlled fashion. You know, like putting said supercollider in a location that, if something unexpected happens, the destruction would be localized to the unlucky research team and not something that would end our entire civilization.
Let me repeat myself again: I AM NOT OPPOSED TO SUPERCOLLIDER RESEARCH ON THE GROUNDS THAT SOMEONE MIGHT DIE. I AM OPPOSED TO SUPERCOLLIDER RESEARCH ON OUR ONLY PLANET ON THE GROUNDS THAT EVERYONE MIGHT DIE. (Apologies for yelling, but I really can't stress this distinction enough, apparently).
Not being believed is hardly a qualification for being right.
An unpopular prediction of cataclysmic disaster is hardly a qualification for being wrong, either.
And, FWIW, I'm not even predicting disaster. I'm just saying that there is sufficient risk to justify taking more precautions than we are.
But, I'm fighting an uphill battle here. Nobody wants to put in a stoplight for the crosswalk until AFTER some poor kid gets killed. It's just human nature...
Naw, Cassandra's nightmares were prophetic -- they actually happened.
:)
Yep, and nobody believed her warnings, either.
Also, don't climb that hill over there, you might find out what is on the other side, and it might be dangerous.
It's certainly possible that the entire physics community is wrong or engaged in a giant conspiracy to destroy us all, but it isn't all that likely, and the fun part is that it is just as much their planet as it is your planet.
I sure hope you're not a troll, because I'm going to give you a real response.
I'm not opposed to the research, and I definitely don't think the physics community is engaged in a conspiracy to destroy us. However, I do know that NO ONE KNOWS what's going to happen when we start smashing bigger and bigger stuff together at higher and higher speeds. We simply don't know how likely a doomsday event is. We can make some good guesses, but at the end of the day they're still guesses. The fact that every other news story I hear about supercolliders basically reads "something totally unexpected happened, physicists are revising their models" doesn't give me a lot of confidence when they say "the odds of something going horribly wrong are negligible, just look at our models!"
I don't mind taking the risk of going over that hill to see what's on the other side, because whatever happens to be over there is, at worst, only going to kill ME, not the entire planet. By that same logic, I would even be personally willing to work as a technician at the deep-space supercollider to further human knowledge of physics. I don't care if I die, I just don't want to see everything we've worked to create over the last 10,000 years destroyed in the blink of an eye by a single research project, just as we are on the cusp of finally sending some spores off this rock.
As another poster pointed out, there's a reason you don't introduce novel upgrades on a live production system. Just because everything SHOULD work out ok doesn't mean it WILL, and I would prefer that we performed these tests in a properly isolated sandbox environment, just in case. I wouldn't care about preserving this planet so much if we already had another one.
As far as the thought of "it's just as much their planet as it is mine," have you ever heard the quote "Your right to swing your fist ends at my face"?
Can you link to a study showing this to be the case, or are you engaged in proctonumerology?
Thank you. I now have a new favorite word.
Can we have the "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense" tag? I've been concerned about the effects of building larger and larger supercolliders on my planet for years now. The whole point of building these things and playing with them is that WE DON'T KNOW exactly what's going to happen when we fire them up, and we learn a lot when we do. I'm all for research, but could we at least stick these things out in space where they are less likely to destroy the entire planet when something unexpected happens? (How about one of the earth-sun LaGrange points? Or maybe Mars is more practical?) Am I the only person that thinks that replicating conditions from the first couple nanoseconds of the universe on the surface of our only planet without actually knowing what's going to happen first is a bad thing? Frankly I think we've been lucky so far, and we need to stop playing Russian Roulette without even knowing the rules.
Actually there was a 13th sign called "Ophiuchus" before they revised the system to get rid of "unlucky" numbers and to shoehorn the remaining signs into periods of equal length. (The reason that Scorpio is traditionally regarded as such a "powerful" sign is that it used to only last for about a week, making Scorpios rather rare.)
I'm probably coming to the discussion too late for anyone to actually read this, but:
Has anyone stopped to consider that just maybe there might be a shred of truth to astrology? If nothing else, people who believe in it may subconsciously shape their actions and interactions with others to make astrological predictions self-fulfilling.
I am a rational, scientifically-minded person that demands proof before belief. I have personally witnessed enough anecdotal evidence in support of there being *something* behind astrology that I feel it warrants further investigation. It could just be an exercise in self-fulfilling group psychology, or there could be a deeper connection. Also, the patterns in the sky and the patterns in human behavior may simply both be expressions of a deeper pattern. (Correlation does not necessarily equal causation).
I am saddened that any real discussion on the topic is halted by knee-jerk reactions. Far too many of us regard "Science" as a religion, devoutly upholding beliefs in that which has been published before, and discounting the possibility of alternate explanations, in a blatant violation of what science is supposed to be about.
If the math says that the universe is really wadded up on itself through higher-dimensional folding, is the thought of everything being connected in a way we can't see through our limited three-dimensional perception filter really that bizarre?
On a more amusing note here in Montreal they use classical music for the same purpose. Stores that don't want kids around will play it outside their shops. Pissed me off the first time heard something good and went inside to get a better listen only to discover that inside they were playing some crap radio station.
They tried that classical music idea a few years ago in my town square to try to get rid of the herds of punks and gothlings that were always hanging around... Amusingly, most of them didn't budge because they actually *liked* the classical music. (FWIW, most ripped clothes/purple mohawk/20lb. wallet chain types that I've ever met are actually audiophiles with good well-rounded taste in music). I'd like to think that some old fogies learned a lesson about preconceived notions, but honestly I doubt it.
By the way, I am nearly 30 myself and am capable of hearing outside of the "normal" range as well. If I ever encounter a business with one of these devices, I'm definitely going to have a little chat with the store manager about how they will never see any of my money ever again, and go out of my way to tell everyone I know to avoid that business as well.
I find it interesting that I'm responding to an article modded +5 insightful and I feel like I'm feeding the trolls. Oh well, here goes nothing.
This being Islam we're talking about, it propably won't take too long before death threats start flying, and it's always possible some lunatic will decide to carry them out, or take less drastic action, such as a cyber-attack against the Wikipedia servers. Making sure that the database is safe from any such attacks is only common sense; and the easiest way to accomplish that is to back it up and spread the copies to as many places as possible.
Cue a hundred replies claiming that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance; and maybe it is - I wouldn't know, since I haven't read their holy book. All I know is that it certainly seems attract lots of bloodthirsty lunatics who use their religion as an excuse to live up to their murderous nature.
Wow. Um, have you actually met any Muslims? Apparently not. I can tell you've been watching a lot of American news and political speeches, though.
Every religion attracts bloodthirsty lunatics who use their religion as an excuse to live up to their murderous nature. Christianity is historically and currently the worst offender by far as far as that one goes.
That said, 99.9% of both Muslims and Christians are actually polite, peaceful, mostly tolerant people. Don't let a few extremists ruin your opinion of an entire culture!
If you must direct your anger somewhere, direct it at the concept of organized religion in general, not individual religions. (Now I'm sure to be modded flamebait!)
Huh? Have you actually tried it? I've seen 30-40% alcohol drinks burn at room temperature without any problems. I call bullshit. I have personally tried to ignite whiskey and vodka (both 80 proof = 40% by volume). They will burn with a pathetic blue flame that will go out if you walk past it. If you've seen a flaming alcohol drink, it involved something a bit stronger than normal booze (something like bacardi 151 (75.5% by volume) burns great).
Sports and religion may not be geeky topics (although I could actually make a case for both, but that's not my point), but copyright law is most definitely a geeky subject these days.
Dude, don't you know anything? The King James Bible is a divinely-inspired *perfect* translation of the Exact Word Of God(TM). At least that's what they told me in Catholic School. They wouldn't lie about something like that, would they?
I doubt violent imagery has no effect on you, it likely agitates the flight or fight response but I am skeptical on whether it can induce violence in a normal/average person.
I am skeptical as well about the ability of violent imagery to induce violence.
I think witnessing any form of violence/dangerous situation definitely activates an instinctual response to prepare for said situation. I bet if you took a group of research subjects, showed them movies of people fighting for 20 minutes, and had them brawl with the "control" group who had just been watching movies of fluffy kittens for 20 minutes, the violence-watchers would win. (Of course, we can't do *that* study... grumble grumble...) I bet you could even demonstrate that people who are already agitated are more likely to go "over the edge" after watching appropriately violent stimulus (and less likely after KittenVision[tm]).
However, I still firmly believe in personal responsibility. Nothing can induce violence but your own damn brain, making the decision to be violent. Please, everyone, hold people accountable for their own actions, and don't censor *my* entertainment just because it might inspire some other asshole to be more of an asshole than he already is.
Offense has been winning out way too much in the race.
Sadly, the second law of thermodynamics pretty much guarantees that the offense side will always have the upper hand.
Now it seems that most kids have some type of allergy or asthma, because we live in such sterile times.
There. Fixed it for ya.
You missed one of the more common ones I've heard: "thumb drive"
This proves conclusively that modern humans are responsible for global warming. As soon as we developed, the Earth started warming up. We did not even need SUVs to cause global climate change.
I've long thought that the origin of global warming was the beginning of organized agriculture, not the industrial revolution... That's when we started deforesting, changing the terrain, and increasing the mammal population (us and our food stock) to ridiculous unheard-of levels (and mammals put out a lot of heat and methane and stuff). Not to mention burning all that wood...
I'm sorry, but as a fan of the movie Faceoff (what can I say, sometimes I like high-spectacle mindless action movies), I must report that they, in fact, did not ignore the issue of bone structure. When they mounted the badguy's face on the hero's skull, they did it on top of a plastic mold that they said was shaped like the badguy's bone structure.
(Not saying that this would work in the real world, just correcting the statement that the movie did not address this issue).
(Replying way too late to get modded up, but it still needs to be said)
Everybody is missing the obvious solution to nuclear waste disposal:
Send it to the sun!
The only real worry is accidents when launching... Or if we decide years from now that we actually have a use for the stuff.